Extending its home Ivy League winning streak to 19 games, Princeton (10-7, 3-0 Ivy) crushed Cornell (10-11, 2-2 Ivy) in the Tigers’ strong 76-59 victory on Friday. Princeton fell behind early, missing nine of its first 10 shots, but the Tigers, led by their forwards, dominated the rest of the game, shooting 63.4 percent from the field after the disappointing start. The tag team of Denton Koon and Ian Hummer combined for the majority of the Tigers’ points, with each forward scoring 22 points. Hummer and forward Hans Braseboth added nine rebounds for the Tigers.

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CORNELL at PENN, 71-69

Coming back from a 10-point deficit, Cornell edged out Penn (4-16, 1-2 Ivy) 71-69 on the Quakers’ home court, the Palestra, on Saturday. Though Penn led 51-41 with 15 minutes remaining on the clock, the Big Red dominated the rest of the second half. Cornell was led by forward Errick Peck, with a game-high 20 points—including 15 points in the second half—off the bench. With only 10 seconds on the clock, guard Galal Cancer, who tallied nine points and four assists off the bench, hit a fading shot in the paint to give the Big Red the hard-fought victory.

Jeff Foote (Cornell '10), a recently named All Star in the Lithuanian Beko LKL (premier league of Lithuania) and his Zalgiris club, return to EuroLeague Top 16 action on February 14 when they face the Brose Baskets of Germany. Brose features Nostjan Nachbar, an 8-year NBA veteran as well as Casey Jacobson, a Stanford product who played several years in the NBA, including three seasons for the Phoenix Suns. Andew Ogilvy, a 6'11" post player out of Australia and Vanderbilt anchors the middle for the German team. Brose is ranked No. 35 in Europe while Zalgiris moves up to No. 4 this week.

Below is an updated list of players committed to Ivy League schools in the class of 2013 (unless otherwise noted):

Cornell RPI Watch: The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule and how a team does against that schedule. It does not consider the margin of victory, but only whether or not a team won and where the game was played (home/away/neutral court). The formula is 25% team winning percentage (WP), 50% opponents' average winning percentage (OWP), and 25% opponents' opponents' average winning percentage (OOWP). (See: CollegeRPI.com for a further explanation of the formula.) The RPI may be the most influential factor in NCAA Tournament seeding. Cornell's RPI rank as of February 6 is No. 210 out of 344 total Division I teams. While neither the Ken Pomeroy or the Sagarin Rankings (USA Today) are used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, the KenPom.com site ranks Cornell No. 242 in the nation, while the Sagarin Rankings (USA Today) have Cornell at No. 223. Both sites are predominantly used by fans and the media.

CBB, ever since Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry withdrew from Harvard, you've written in your Comments section that it's not a foregone conclusion the two players would return. I've always scoffed at your remarks as mere wishful thinking, the musings of a madman, as it were.

However, yesterday in Harvard's newspaper The Crimson there was an article about the announcement which the college Adminstrative Board recently released concerning the punishment of students caught in the cheating scandal. A reader commented in the message board that a review of the men's basketball program is currently underway at the senior level of the Harvard adminstration, specifically an examination of whether the university is comfortable with the aggressive posture that the team takes toward academic admissions standards.

That news comes from a reader, not the article itself, so of course it's unsubstantiated. However, if what the reader reports is in fact true, that is the one scenario I can envision in which Casey and Curry might not come back.

Suppose for a moment senior administrators at Harvard tell Amaker that he can no longer push the envelope on the Academic Index, recruiting junior varsity players for their SAT scores, etc. Amaker might then finally pull the trigger and accept one of the seven-figure deals which are dangled in front of him every off-season, such as the $5.5 million contract offered last year by the University of Miami.

In that event, with Amaker headed for another program, I can see Casey and Curry deciding that they, too, will take their talents to South Beach.

Did read the article and it is consistent with what I have been hearing.

My hunch is that if Casey, Brown, Giger and Curry return, we all will hear about it immediately in The Crimson or other "media" sources. So long as there is silence, would assume nothing is finalized and issue remains unresolved.

Even if they do come back, would expect there to be some negative publicity.

Can't think of a single instance where a player was given a 5th year for a non-religious, health, family emergency reason in the Ivy.